Learn how Auto Trader has automated their Consolidation & Regulatory Reporting with the press of a button!

Transcript

Auto Trader is the largest automobile and digital marketplace in UK and Ireland and we get cater for 80% of the retailers in UK and Ireland … so in order to be effective, in terms of how they compete within an App marketplace, Auto Trader has to provide products, which allow them to be more competitive.

We've got to provide the right information at the right time and be able to give that information in a timely manner.

We had very little version control, in terms of … when the numbers were submitted, and the format of the spreadsheets, when they were collated together, it would take longer to close the period end, then it would take longer for our CFO to understand where the financial figures were, and so we had to come up with a solution to provide our CFO a quicker and more efficient way in terms of producing the reports.

Before CCH Tagetik, Auto Trader … we were based regionally…so, we had hundreds of offices, so each office would run their own consolidation, so that different processes … a lot of FTE's -full time employees- in terms of who would actually perform those processes, so before CCH Tagetik there were a lot of inefficiencies in terms of how we would consolidate the final numbers for the business, and therefore we had to look for a solution in order to create more efficiency within the processes.

So, basically, CCH Tagetik sits on top of our general ledger system, so we have to wait until whenever the month end is closed in our general ledger system, how we would then move that into CCH Tagetik and to then, therefore, look at Management reporting and Statutory reporting, Purposes, so the trigger effect in terms of using the ETL mechanism allowed us a gain from a non-technical point of view, for an accountant to push the button to then run it into CCH Tagetik, so then instantly be able to look at our consolidated figures, so … again, when we were looking at that process and we had to make it, it was just pressing a button, so it wasn't reliance on IT and towards those processes, and also that we can build reporting pack which might be sixty or seventy pages long, but … again for accountants is push a button and to have the numbers there ready and in a very quick order So, therefore it, meant again the Excel interface, helped them in terms of creating those process in the first place but also the way we would look at regulatory reporting, how we would group our reports in order to report in one way, so our standard management and P&L;, but then in another, again to follow IFRS and UK GAAP and it meant that we had to look at changing numbers around and so using something like CCH Tagetik using the MDX functionality, using the FST functionality, we can present the same data but in different ways, very quickly.

It is a lot more straightforward, so when we your hooking up against databases, against… ledger systems to then present a report to the end-user, it seems to be a lot more straightforward in terms of integration so that really from an architectural point of view, is what's impressed me the most.